Gamers spend a lot of their time seeing virtual landscapes from over and behind the shoulders of digital characters. So what would it be like to walk around in the real world in a third-person perspective?
Meet the Avatar Machine, the brainchild Marc Owens, a design student at the Royal College of Art in London. By wearing virtual-reality goggles (and a goofy costume), the user can get a glimpse of life as a virtual character [via Boingboing]:
The video's actually an updated version of the original design -- which looked suspiciously like a camera held by three poles sticking out of the back of the costume. Who knew that the amalgam of art and science would make you look like the love child of Cloud and Shrek? Check out a video of the original design in action after the jump.
Agh! It's got that weird GTA4 thing that stretches the edge of the image. That's more disorientating than the 3rd person-ness.
Alex Martin ,
December 02, 2009
+0
The cameras need to point up higher so that you can see what's in front of you better.
Interesting idea, and if they can get it to look less stupid, it looks like it would be fun to check out.
Dan Evanson ,
December 02, 2009
+0
His legs are so long.
Rich McGrath ,
December 02, 2009
+0
Wait, how is that working? I am a bit confused here. Am I really behind in what camera's can do?
This is certainly rather trippy, though. The artist who made this may seem a little pretentious, but his goal seems to make sense. If you saw yourself from five feet behind you probably would lose a sense of being yourself. Either that, or you would feel like you are playing an early 3D PS1 game with a bad camera. I didn't watch till the end because I am on a work computer; did he steal a car and kill a hooker?
The first shot in the video gave me flashbacks to the tank-style survival horror games of the PS1 era. I wonder how difficult it would be to coordinate ourselves if the viewpoint of our body was from a static camera? If you were a hunter, would you constantly have trouble being stocked up on ammo?
Alex Gagne ,
December 03, 2009
+0
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